Blade Runner and Brave New World: What I’m Not Writing in my Essay

In my English course we are doing what is essentially a compare and contrast unit. We use the two texts to explore “Into the Wild.” NB: Explore means bullshit incessantly while nattering about techniques.

Compare: Both texts have a white dude as the central character. One has a white male writer, the other a white male director.

Contrast: One protagonist rapes the love interest, the other one murders his.

Compare: Both love interests aren’t really characters in their own right.

Contrast: One text was written in 1932, the other text was released in 1982.

Compare: Neither texts discuss or represent anything other than heterosexuality.

In addition, Blade Runner is one of those films that are so artsy that you only get a hazy outline of what everything actually means. You are left with the bitter comfort that you know whatever they’re saying, they’re saying it artistically.

Brave New World has interesting concepts, yet doesn’t carry them to fruition. The heavy handed writing makes it a slog. It’s reminiscent of expensive wine that has grown too old. You know you should be drinking it, and that it is really good, yet you’re missing what you could have had.

So thanks ever so much Board of Studies for assigning these texts. We just don’t get enough patriarchy, hetereonormativity or white supremacy in our lives.

And I’m going to take this opportunity to document my loathing for Harrison Ford. He plays the same character in all of his well-known movies, an arrogant privileged jerk.

Yep, in BNW it pretty much read like “How can I get a minimum number of female characters in a book? I know! Having the Lenina sleep with all the interesting dude characters! Oh, and I’m just so smat! I have those those incredibly subtle allusion things.”